Presently used fire extinguishers which dispense solid or liquid fire extinguishing agents are containers made of pressure resistant metal because the fire extinguishing agent is stored under pressure in them. The ordinarily used containers are steel. This makes the containers heavy and difficult to handle. In order to provide a means to dispense all the fire extinguishing agent from the container, a "head space" of 25% of the volume of the container is needed. This increases the amount of space needed to store the fire extinguishers and is significant where large fire extinguishers or many fire extinguishers are used to protect an area.
The fire extinguishing agent is dispensed from the fire extinguishers through a valve. The valves of conventional fire extinguishers are opened either manually, electrically, thermally or with a squib. The electrical or squib actuated valves operate rapidly, but, the volume dispensed is a function of the size of the valve orifice, which in most cases is of insufficient size to permit substantially instantaneous dispensing of the fire extinguishing agent. Thus, the known fire extinguishers are not suitable for extinguishing fast moving fires like ammunition fires or vehicular fires. These types of fires require large amounts of extinguishing agent in a very short time since, as is known in the fire extinguishing art, the faster that a given amount of fire extinguishing agent is applied to a fire, the greater is the probability that the fire will be extinguished. Because of the time needed to dispense the fire extinguishing agent, more agent is needed to extinguish a fire than if all the agent in a fire extinguisher is dispensed simultaneously. In mining, grain elevators, oil well drilling operations and other dangerous situations, large instantaneous applications of fire extinguishing agents are required to achieve maximum effect.
There is thus a need for a fire extinguisher which will enable all its contents of fire extinguishing agent to be instantaneously applied to a fire and which can be more easily stored safely with smaller space requirements than conventional fire extinguishers.